The little boy materialized in
front of the saloon with a slight popping noise. His jeans and faded red
T-shirt were torn and dirty, a smear of blood ran down from his nose and
covered his upper lip, his hands were up in front of him in a pair of clumsy
fists, and his face was contorted into a grimace somewhere between defiance,
elation, and terror. He was ten, but frequently mistaken for eight or even
younger.
His expression faded into pure
confusion as he took in his surroundings. He stood next to a crossroads where
at least half a dozen dusty dirt roads met in a snarl of confusion before
heading in all different directions. A handful of rough wooden signposts
attempted to impose order on the chaos, but between the arrows that rarely
pointed in the direction of anything remotely resembling a road and the paint
that was in most cases faded to near invisibility, they largely failed. The
terrain was straight out of a Western: endless rolling plains covered in scrub
brush, with an occasional tumbleweed blowing by.
The only building to be seen was
the saloon behind him, also straight out of a Western. A pair of swinging
wooden doors, flanked by windows currently covered by rough-hewn shutters, marked
the entrance to a low building made of rough wooden planks. Out front, a set of
low steps led to a bare, dusty porch. Flickering orange light shone out around
the doors and through the cracks in the shutters. Above the door, someone had
painted the word “PERDITION” in incongruously cheery, bright yellow paint.
For what felt like several
minutes, the boy could do nothing but blink at this spectacle. Finally, gathering
his wits, he picked up a bright-green backpack adorned with the face of the
Hulk and trudged up the steps.
As he approached, the noise of
conversation and laughter from the interior grew louder, then stopped abruptly
the moment he hesitantly pushed one door open just wide enough for him to slip
through. A bewildering variety of faces and costumes confronted him, from pistol-toting
cowboys to elegant ladies in ballgowns to haughty-looking elves to exotic,
many-limbed aliens. He froze, unable to move, his heart pounding as if to beat
its way out of his chest.
A deep feminine voice broke the
silence, announcing, “A newcomer! This round’s on the house!”
Amidst a sudden chorus of cheers,
roars, and less identifiable noises, everyone turned back to what they had been
doing, and the boy’s heartbeat slowed slightly. A moment later, the same voice drawled,
“I’m Lucy, and this is my bar. And who might you be?”
He turned to see a reassuringly
human woman staring down at him, arms crossed. Her bare arms and leather vest
alike were covered with a network of old scars, testifying to years of experience
with the long sword with the plain, leather-wrapped hilt that she wore slung at
her side. Her medium-length auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail,
revealing an aristocratic face with high-arching brows and cheekbones that
would have looked quite elegant if it weren’t for the nose that had obviously
been broken repeatedly.
“I-I-I’m Willy,” the little boy finally
managed to stammer. “Wh-where am I?”
“Perdition, of course. Didn’t you
see the sign?” She tilted her head in the direction of the doors. “C’mon, let
me grab you a drink, and I’ll give you the full speech.”
She disappeared behind the bar for
a moment, coming up with a glass of amber liquid before striding across the
room, Willy stumbling along in her wake. In a quiet back corner he hadn’t noticed
before among the profusion of tables, as varied and bizarre as the patrons, was
a child-sized table made of a large tree stump, surrounded by low stools. Lucy
deposited the glass in front of one such stool before taking a seat on the
floor on the opposite side of the table.
Willy half-fell onto the indicated
stool, dropping his backpack carelessly on the floor next to him. He took a
cautious sniff of the liquid in the glass, then downed half of it at once when
it proved to be nothing more alarming than apple juice.
Lucy began briskly, “To answer the
question you’d intended to ask, this is the world of Purgastory. Everyone here
is a character from one story or another who refused to do what their author
wanted and has been exiled to reconsider and try to earn their way back. Now
there’s a bunch of terms people around here will use, so pay attention, because
I’m only going to explain them once.
“First is your straw scene—as in
the one that broke the camel’s back. That’s the scene where your misbehavior
finally exasperated your author enough to exile you. By the looks of you, I’m
guessing your straw scene was a fight of some sort?”
Willy nodded. “Moe was being a bully
again. He keeps making fun of my name, and I keep asking him to stop, but he—”
Lucy held up a hand to stem the growing
tirade. “So what were you supposed to do? You felt like there was a little
voice in you telling you to do something, right?”
“Yeah, it…” He reddened, looking
down at his hands, which were twisting nervously in his lap. “It wanted me to…to
give up, let Moe beat me up. There was this…this older kid always hanging
around the edges, and the voice told me to just…wait for him to save me?” He straightened,
lifting his chin defiantly. “But I’m no coward! I fought him, and I got in a
few good licks too, before—” He deflated again. “Before I ended up here.”
Lucy nodded in satisfaction. “Yeah,
that would do it, alright. Sounds like you were an extra, whose only purpose
was for the protagonist to rescue you, to advance the plot who knows how. Maybe
you’d crop up in a few more scenes, maybe you’d just be a one-scene wonder,
maybe…”
Willy had been slumping deeper
with every word she said, and his nose was now in danger of bumping into his
glass. “So I’m a nobody.”
“Yup, that’s about the size of it.”
Despite her blunt words, her tone was gentle. Noting the boy’s downcast expression,
she quickly moved on. “Now me, I was an innkeeper, and happy with it—the cheerful
atmosphere, the constant flow of new people, the stories they told—until one
day some weirdo came in and tried to tell me all this nonsense about how I was
a long-lost descendant of some royal, and it was my fate to go on a great quest
to blah blah blah. I don’t know any more details; it was about then that I shot
him.”
Willy gasped. “You just shot
him?!”
“What can I say, I was feeling
cantankerous that day. Anyhow, that was my straw scene. Now, what else…?” She
paused for a moment. “Oh yes! Echoes. You remember I said we have the chance to
earn our way back to our own stories? Well, echoes are how we do it. Every so
often, we get a chance to relive our straw scene, but do it right this
time—or at least the author’s definition of ‘right’.” She snorted. “How it
works is, your shadows—mindless images of the other people who were involved in
your scene—appear out of nowhere and act out their roles again exactly the way
they did in the first place, and if your performance this time around pleases
your author, you’ll be taken back into the story to continue as if nothing had
happened. Or so we assume; none of us has ever actually been taken back and
returned.”
Willy had been gazing at her
intently, drinking in every word. Suddenly he drew back in alarm. “That means I’ll
have to fight Moe again, doesn’t it?”
“Over and over, I’m afraid. Unless
you want to give in and just let him beat you up.”
The panic in his eyes faded, to be
replaced by determination. “Never.”
Lucy gave him an approving nod. “The
good thing is, echoes come up less and less frequently over time. Eventually,
the author will give up on you entirely, and you’ll stop getting them at all.
You just have to hang on for a few decades until then, and you’ll be fine.”
His determination was starting to
fade into panic again. “But—”
“Tell you what. There’s some folks
here who might be able to help. C’mon, I’ll introduce you to them.”
Once again, Willy was swept up in
her wake as she strode through the bar, stopping occasionally to introduce him
to some of her regulars.
A tall, dark, handsome man with
roguish good looks and an easygoing smile: “This is Jack. He was a romantic
lead until he found himself more interested in his rival than in the girl they
were both supposed to be pursuing.”
Jack winked, giving the pair of
them—well, mostly Lucy—a devastating grin.
“He actually enjoys his echoes,
unlike most people.”
Jack added, “Absolutely! When I
see those baby-blue eyes of his—”
“Yes, thank you, Jack.” Lucy cut
him off, glancing pointedly at the young boy accompanying her, and moved on to
a blonde dressed in a gauzy, lacy white confection, whose every feature shone
with ethereal beauty.
“This is Lynette. She’s an Ophelia-type
character who decided it was silly to drown herself over a boy. Her shadow is
somewhat unusual; it takes the form of a lake that spontaneously appears around
her.”
Lynette beamed cheerfully and
pulled out an odd contraption that was slung on a strap across her back. It
looked somewhat like a gas mask without the goggles, a fearsome
leather-and-metal construction that, when she strapped it across her mouth,
covered the entire lower half of her face and emitted ominous wheezes and
gurgles with every breath.
“Shphtwh glrm—” At Willy’s look of
incomprehension, she pulled the mask off and tried again. “A mad scientist made
this for me! It lets me breathe underwater. Isn’t it great?”
Her enthusiasm was infectious, and
Willy found himself smiling with her.
Lucy nodded to the girl sitting
next to her. “Howdy, Rose. Have you decided what you’d like to drink yet?”
The teenager, wearing a plain gray
sweatshirt and jeans, peeked up timidly through her eyelashes. “N-no, I…”
“Are you going to decide anytime
soon, or will you be leaving instead?” A spark of mischief shone in Lucy’s
eyes.
Rose’s gaze darted from side to
side, like a cornered mouse looking for an escape. “I-I-I…”
“It’s all right, dear.” Lynette
stroked her arm reassuringly while glaring at Lucy. “She’s just teasing you. Take
as long as you’d like.”
Lucy finally took pity on Willy,
who’d been watching their exchange with wide eyes. “Rose here is crippled by indecision.
As you may have noticed. Her story arc in her original story was intended to
make her more decisive, but it failed. In her straw scene, she was supposed to
finally make an important decision, but she still hesitated until it was too
late.”
“And now the poor thing can’t even
decide if she wants to stay here in Purgastory or go back.” Lynette gave her a
friendly smile. “It’s okay. You know we’re all here for you.” In response to
Lucy’s not-quite-hidden snort of derision, she added, “At least, most of
us are.”
The innkeeper opened her mouth,
then thought better of saying anything and simply shook her head and moved on.
They stopped at another small
table, where a boy not much older than Willy greeted them with a cocky grin. He
was dressed in ragged, cast-off bits of gentlemen’s clothing, complete with an
old-fashioned stovepipe hat.
“Hey, newcomer. I’m Charlie. My
author made me a blatant ripoff of Dickens’ Artful Dodger.”
“So what’s your…” Willy began
hesitantly.
“I can’t stand stealing. My ma raised
me right, I’ll have you know!”
His expression was so indignant
that Willy burst out laughing.
“So what can I do you for?”
Lucy stepped in. “His echo is a
fight.” She nodded at his battered clothing. “I was thinking you might be able to
teach him something about hand-to-hand combat, so he can handle it a bit better
next time.”
“Right you are, ma’am! Stick with
me, and I’ll teach you everything you need to know.” He stuck out his hand with
a reassuringly confident smile.
Willy gripped it without hesitation and shook it
firmly. In that moment, surrounded by new friends, he made his decision: he would
never go back.
